“Greeting to Pharaoh,” she cried.

“Greeting to the Royal Princess of Egypt,” he answered.

“Nay, Pharaoh, the Queen of Egypt.”

By Seti’s side there was another throne, that in which he had set dead
Merapi with a crown upon her head.  He turned and looked at it a while. 
Then, he said: 

“I see that this seat is empty.  Let the Queen of Egypt take her place there if so she wills.”

She stared at him as if she thought that he was mad, though doubtless she had heard something of that story, then swept up the steps and sat herself down in the royal chair.

“Your Majesty has been long absent,” said Seti.

“Yes,” she answered, “but as my Majesty promised she would do, she has returned to her lawful place at the side of Pharaoh—­never to leave it more.”

“Pharaoh thanks her Majesty,” said Seti, bowing low.

Some six years had gone by, when one night I was seated with the Pharaoh Seti Meneptah in his palace at Memphis, for there he always chose to dwell when matters of State allowed.

It was on the anniversary of the Death of the Firstborn, and of this matter it pleased him to talk to me.  Up and down the chamber he walked and, watching him by the lamplight, I noted that of a sudden he seemed to have grown much older, and that his face had become sweeter even than it was before.  He was more thin also, and his eyes had in them a look of one who stares at distances.

“You remember that night, Friend, do you not,” he said; “perhaps the most terrible night the world has ever seen, at least in the little piece of it called Egypt.”  He ceased, lifted a curtain, and pointed to a spot on the pillared portico without.  “There she sat,” he went on; “there you stood; there lay the boy and there crouched his nurse—­by the way, I grieve to hear that she is ill.  You are caring for her, are you not, Ana?  Say to her that Pharaoh will come to visit her—­when he may, when he may.”

“I remember it all, Pharaoh.”

“Yes, of course you would remember, because you loved her, did you not, and the boy too, and even me, the father.  And so you will love us always when we reach a land where sex with its walls and fires are forgotten, and love alone survives—­as we shall love you.”

“Yes,” I answered, “since love is the key of life, and those alone are accursed who have never learned to love.”

“Why accursed, Ana, seeing that, if life continues, they still may learn?” He paused a while, then went on:  “I am glad that he died, Ana, although had he lived, as the Queen will have no children, he might have become Pharaoh after me.  But what is it to be Pharaoh?  For six years now I have reigned, and I think that I am beloved; reigned over a broken land which I have striven to bind together, reigned over a sick land which I have striven to heal, reigned over a desolated land which I have striven to make forget.  Oh! the curse of those Hebrews